This study addresses the question of an African Christian ethic. It stresses that the descriptive, comparative and ethnological methods frequently used must be replaced with a radical hermeneutic, which engages Africans at profound intellectual and cultural-psychological levels so as to make sense of their past and present cultural, historical, religious and anthropological experiences. The study therefore subjects the concepts of Inculturation and Africanness to a rigorous re-interpretation, goes in search of the Christian foundations of an African Christian ethic and applies the theory of an Inculturation ethic to the concrete problem of political leadership in Africa. The study shows that unless Inculturation is accompanied by a radical renewal of memory, it is bound to become itself a masque that covers the concrete situation of Africa.

The Author: Simon Kofi Appiah is a Ghanaian. He studied philosophy and theology in Cape-Coast (Ghana) and was ordained a Catholic priest in 1990. He did postgraduate studies at the University of Tübingen (Germany), completing in May, 2000.